Phew, two months silence. My life was pretty stressful in
July. The vacation was then well needed. It started (and
ended) with a not so great experience with the train. But the
sky was amazing that day - through the tainted train window
it looked nearly surreal.

And (much) later, we saw a rainbow circle. I'm literally
over the clouds!



In the first week I had to struggle with jet lag - couldn't
sleep or getting awake in the middle of the night. Even in
the second week I was still very tired. So, we only did
some day tours around Melbourne - Great Ocean Road,
Melbourne Zoo, Ballarat, Olinda (yummy pie!), etc.



My brother drove us around patiently (thanks, dude!) and
since he knew, I love art & craft, he took me to the
craft shows at St. Kilda and at the Melbourne Art Centre.
Craft Cubed was also on going when we were there, that
I got the chance to visit some studios during their open studio
time - e.g. this studio showed us, how they print on their
Heidelberg machine. They even handed out the results to
the guests. I was excited - you know, how I love letterpress
prints. This studio gallery got some lovely print works and
they kindly pointed me out to the next gallery too. Actually,
some days later I came back to Fitzroy, because there are
many interesting smaller stores around.



Once we went to the city too. I didn't really like it though -
too crowded. The only good thing was these guys. Look
at this video - how could one not like them ;)



But the best of all is at my parent's home. My mom and my
sister in law spoiled us with Indonesian food. My son, who
loves fruits, could eat different kind of citrus fruit from the
garden - kumquat, lemon, lemonade, etc. The chili and some
other ingredients for cooking are also from the garden. And
of course there are orchids, succulents and other plants. My
father has a very green thumb.



I really enjoyed the vacation. It's a balance between relaxing,
crafting (yup, got my fingers on mom's sewing machine :))
and action. If you are interested, please check my gallery for
more photos.

I hope, you all had (or are still having) a great summer too!

BTW, Maki has posted the result of her Japan project and
reported her visit in Japan. The project is still on-going.

I'm working on two sewing projects at the moment - a 
sleeveless top and a long skirt. Both have to be finished 
tomorrow (oh wait.. it's already Saturday, so they have to 
be finished by evening), cause I want to wear them on the 
choir performance on Sunday. I started last Saturday, but 
haven't got the time to finish them this week. My kitchen 
(where I sew because of the bigger table) is a completely 
chaos - even more than my usual chaos.



Talking about chaos... remember the disaster that struck
Japan last year? They are still recovering and still need help.
A ceramic artist started a Help Japan Project last year -
that was when I got my birds. This time she starts the Help 
Japan Project 2, thus if you want to help (and get similar
birds or.. - nah, I won't reveal it here..), please take a look
at her last post how to do so.


Birds by Maki; coaster was a souvenir from a dear friend

Yesterday I went to the museum, and let me guided through
the exhibition of a forgotten artist. Her work is stunning and
her life is so sad - somehow I could feel for her.

Afterwards I went to the Cathedral - up to the tower for the
first time. The view is amazing, even if it was still cloudy
when I was up there. Here are some of the pics I took and
you could see more here.

Back home I was hungry, but didn't got anything to cook
quickly, as I planned to get my hands on soba. Thus my
hunger has to wait. Making soba is not as it looks like (I
read some instructions and watched a few videos the night
before). The mixing part is not the problem, as I am used to
kneed my noodle dough with my hands, but the rolling and
cutting parts are tricky. I tried to roll it out using the pasta
machine, but I was afraid, that it'd break, so I went back
to do it by hand. As the result my soba was all short and
thick ^_^

In my soba:

180g buckwheat flour

20g corn starch

300ml hot water (or 250ml? add little by little)

a pinch of salt (normally, it doesn't belong to soba, I think)

a pinch of matcha powder

It was time to harvest some strawberries today before the
slugs, insects and birds eat them all up.



I also pulled and picked some greens - borage and lemon
balm. My garden is full of borage. They sowed themselves.
Each year more and more, since I wasn't able to pull them
out as soon as they started to bloom - the bees & bumble-
bees love them so and I love bees & bumble-bees.



A friend was so kind to cook chicken soup and brought me
some last week. I don't want to bring the boxes empty back
to her. So I was thinking of bringing her some strawberries.
But the strawberries were not sweet at all - too much rain
and too little sunshine. So I decided to make chutney and
fill it up in glass jars.



I had the rest of the chutney for dinner with some baked
potatoes - yumm!



In the chutney:
Strawberries - cut the big ones in halves
Ginger
Onion
Chili - with the seeds
Sugar
Lemon balsamico
Cidre vinegar
Salt
Pinch of cardamom seeds
Pinch of Black caraway seeds
Pinch of dried Rosemary
Lemon balm

For the baked potatoes: mix sweet paprika, cumin, salt and
pepper with olive oil, put the potato wedges in and mix until
all well covered with the mixture. Bake them in 220°C oven
for about half an hour until they are golden.

I thought, I'd better saved all the last opened peonies from
the rain, when I was removing the withered petals in the
garden. Perhaps a silly action, but I need a reason for cutting
so many flowers at once :-P